Friday, June 29, 2018

Airbus Defence and Space is in the home stretch of work to ship the first European Service Module (ESM) to its Florida launch site for integration with the rest of the hardware for NASA’s Orion spacecraft. When fully assembled and tested, Orion will be launched on the Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) test flight to orbit the Moon and return.

ESM-1 is now undergoing subsystem functional testing at its Assembly, Integration, and Testing (AIT) facility in Bremen, Germany, following completion of most hardware that can be installed on-site. Also known as Flight Model-1 (FM-1), the module will be flown to the Kennedy Space Center this summer to begin the sequence of steps to put together the full Orion spacecraft.

As FM-1 nears completion, Flight Model-2 (FM-2) has joined its sister module in the clean room at Bremen to begin its AIT flow. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are also working with prime contractor Airbus on beginning construction of ESM hardware for subsequent modules this summer.

Thursday, June 28, 2018

The first-known visitor from outside the Solar System, an object dubbed ‘Oumuamua, is an icy comet rather than a rocky asteroid. New measurements help to confirm early guesses as to the composition of the interstellar interloper, and could also aid researchers in their hunt for similar objects in our Solar System.

Careful observations of ‘Oumuamua’s orbit showed that as the object flew through space, something continually nudged it a tiny bit farther from the Sun than expected. That something was probably ice that warmed up and sprayed gas into space. This process is characteristic of a comet, rather than an asteroid, even though ‘Oumuamua never displayed the glorious tail of gas and dust that accompanies most comets.

“It’s an unusual comet, and that’s pretty exciting,” says Karen Meech, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. She and her colleagues, led by astronomer Marco Micheli of the European Space Agency in Frascati, Italy, report the discovery on 27 June in Nature.

Sunday, June 24, 2018

Computer-generated imagery has emerged showing what could be the design for China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN’s) third aircraft carrier, which is believed to under construction at the Jiangnan Changxingdao shipyard in Shanghai.

Released on 20 June, the image, which was shown during a meeting of senior China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (CSIC) executives, depicts three carriers, two of which are configured for short take-off but arrested recovery (STOBAR) aircraft operations using a ski-jump; and a third one (in the centre of the image) configured for catapult-assisted take-off but arrested recovery (CATOBAR) operations.

The image, which was initially posted on CSIC’s WeChat social media page but later deleted, can be interpreted as representing China’s two Kuznetsov-class carriers – Liaoning and an as yet unnamed one that is undergoing trials – and the third carrier, which had already been expected to have a flat deck and feature electromagnetic catapults rather than steam-powered ones.

India is putting together an AI teask force to play catchup to China and the US.

Google may not renew its contract with the Pentagon for its software bots. This is due to the Pentagon wanting to expand the contract and employees at Google protesting and even resigning. Google management thought the program would expand enormously and be very lucrative. That's been kiboshed. Google is promising an ethical guideline for military AI.

Friday, June 22, 2018

President Trump’s recent directive to the Defense Department to create a new branch of the military, a United States Space Force, was not an idle musing. Trump’s proposal derives from a growing debate inside military and political circles about how to best meet the threat posed to American space assets by potential enemies: Russia and China, to be precise.

Pentagon officials are sounding the alarm that the United States is not ready for a space war. The other two great space powers have been creating the weapons to achieve an orbital Pearl Harbor, the destruction of satellites that provide the military with communications, navigation, and intelligence capabilities it will need in a war. After years of neglect, the current administration is pouring resources into a fevered attempt to play catchup before it’s too late.

The argument against a United States Space Force, at least at this time, is that creating it would be a massive reorganizational undertaking, complicating rather than enhancing America’s capability to fight a war in space in the near term. The argument for creating a space-faring branch of the military stems from the fact that the space environment is characterized by lack of air, extremes of heat and cold, microgravity, and the realities of orbital mechanics, which mean that no object remains in one place. The space environment is far different from the air, sea, and land where Americans are accustomed to fighting and hence needs a branch of the military trained and accustomed to operating in it.

Sunday, June 17, 2018

China’s first aircraft carrier group, formed around the carrier Liaoning , has reached initial operational capability (IOC), the Ministry of National Defense (MND) in Beijing announced on 31 May.

The exercises conducted by the carrier group have become more demanding and “the carrier formation’s comprehensive system of offence and defence has been effectively tested”, MND spokesperson Senior Colonel Ren Guoqiang told reporters during a press conference.

Consumer groups are demanding the FTC investigate the Tesla Autopilot.

Tesla's Autopilot is getting an update soon. Supposedly, in August, Tesla will enable more self driving capabilities in Autopilot.

Uber's software had its automatic object avoidance software switched off by design when it hit and killed the woman in Arizona. This was turned off because it kept getting false positives. The NTSB is blaming of the turn off of that system for the crash. The system DID detect the woman 6 seconds prior to the crash. Uber has shut down its Arizona ops. Uber is moving its ops back to Pittsburgh. The mayor there had no idea Uber was coming back.

Uber is signaling it might end up using Waymo self driving tech. Given their own abysmal record, that would probably be a good idea.

Waymo is ordering up to 62,000 Chrysler Hybrid Pacifica Minivans for conversion into self driving cars.

Waymo wants to take its self driving cars to europe to act as taxis, but potentially under another name.

Sunday, June 10, 2018

Last week, the United Nations announced that it was working with China’s human spaceflight program to fly experiments on that country’s space station. Countries, especially developing ones, could submit proposals to fly experiments on the future China Space Station starting some time in the 2020s. “The China Space Station belongs not only to China, but also to the world,” Chinese ambassador Shi Zhongjun said in the UN statement about the agreement.

Saturday, June 09, 2018

Dark Sword:
Images have come out of a Chinese UCAV called the Dark Sword. While not new, it was only previously seen as a model at a conference and a blurry photo before. Now, far from blurry. Some speculation as to what is going on.YF-23:
The YF-23 had a unique feature to deal with boundary air around the inlets.

Will Germany and France actually replace the Eurofighter Typhoon with a stealth jet?

Su-57:

Su-57 is being called about as stealthy as the F/A-18E/F, even by those who seem to like the plane. However, it does have some features intended to fight true 5th gen fighters. The Business Insider seems to agree the Su-57 is NOT a stealth aircraft. Why Russia might not be able to build a stealth aircraft. The SU-57 is estimated to have an RCS of .1m^2. That is stealthier than the F/A-18E/F, but enough to be called a true stealth aircraft.

The Indians are claiming they can easily spot the J-20 fighters with their Su-30MKs. The question is whether or not the J-20 has reflectors on like the US fighters often do.

Sixth Generation Fighters:

The USAF has stated the analysis of alternatives for the NGAD program is to be completed this summer.

The USAF is requesting $492 million for its next generation air dominance aircraft for FY19. The projected funding profile (FY20: $1.3B, FY21 $1.9B, FY22: $3.2B (comparison, GAO report on the ATF program)) looks as though there will be a repeat of the B-21 demonstrator flights. This seems pretty close to confirmed with the line on page 4 of the request that states "In addition, technical risk reduction activities will be performed
to include experimentation, integration and building demonstrative prototypes."
The US Navy in contrast has only requested $5 million in FY19 to continue its AOA.

H-20:

China might be trolling Northrop over the H-20 or may have come up with their own flying wing. Or both. Some think China will unveil the H-20 relatively soon.

Friday, June 08, 2018

The New Horizons spacecraft is about to leave hibernation to begin preparations for its January 2019 flyby of the Kuiper Belt object (KBO) 2014 MU69, nicknamed “Ultima Thule”. The flyby, set to occur in the early morning of January 1, 2019, will be the second for New Horizons, following its historic 2015 Pluto flyby. It will also be the furthest flyby from Earth ever performed by a spacecraft.